3/5/06

Grasping the Sparrow's Tail

Vacant Spaces, Ghostly Traces, Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times March 2003
Michael Boran’s Grasping the Sparrow’s Tail is an exhibition of photographs that explore the fleeting interactions between people and places in terms of momentary alignments and fugitive traces. That might sound a bit vague, and it is actually difficult to articulate what it is precisely that Boran does with his images, but they do have a beautifully light, magical touch and are clearly the products of a real visual intelligence.
In one sequence, people are distributed across a paved square in Seville like pieces on a chessboard. In Echo, it is as if stone steps remember the footsteps of someone descending. Footprints features an amazing conglomeration of criss-crossing, overlaping prints. Ladder is an extraordinary study of the excavated interior of a building, and it is a great photograph. All these images have in common a preoccupation with surface and marks. There are layers upon layers of both. Throughout, there is a real sense of Boran closing in on something, searching for an image.